The New Kid
by Sonicninjagirl
Summary: Yay, my first story! Knuckles finds a young girl that has crash landed on Angel Island in a spaceship. Rated T for now just in case. Don't like, don't flame. R&R!
1. A stranger arrives

Disclaimer: Sonic and friends do not belong to me. They belong to Sega and Sonic Team. Cloud however, does belong to me.

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A/N: Most of my stories are going to go in a series. This is the first of the series and my first story on here, so no flames. If there's something you think could use an adjustment, please politely suggest it. Okay, enough of this junk, here's the story.

Chapter one: A stranger arrives

It had been about a month since everyone returned home and about a week since the World Grand Prix. Tails still hadn't quite gotten over Cosmo yet but he was much better than he had been. Chris had gone home and there was still no news about him or Shadow, who still hadn't returned. Rouge was suspicious that Eggman was hiding something, and was spying on him. No one really had any information on the Babylon Rouges, but everyone's guess was that they were stealing treasure. Knuckles was guarding the Master Emerald as usual when he heard a faint scream.

"What the heck…?" he asked himself, looking around. Because the emerald shrine was so tall, he still had a good view of Angel Island, despite all the trees. He spotted a bluebird on her hands and knees. She appeared to be in great pain.

_What's she doing here? _Knuckles thought. He quietly walked up to her and hid behind a bush in case she would see him.

As Knuckles got closer to the girl he saw that she was young, about thirteen, and had short white hair with a blue ribbon with what looked like a metal plate on the top. She was wearing blue jeans and a dark jacket. Knuckles could tell that there was kind some pattern on the front but from where he was he couldn't tell what it was exactly. Next to her was a small space ship that appeared to have crash landed.

The girl kept grabbing the back of her neck and muttering to herself. At first Knuckles thought she was crazy. He looked at her more closely and decided she was harmless enough and got out from under the bush.

"Hey what are you doing here?" he said firmly. The girl jumped jumped to her feet immediately, but then grabbed the back of her neck, collapsed to her knees, using her free hand to keep herself from falling all the way to the ground. Knuckles saw tiger claw markings on the front where he couldn't see before. Without thinking, he quickly walked up to her and knelt down beside her.

"What's wrong?" he asked. The girl didn't answer, but let out a loud scream (Knuckles had to cover his ears), and passed out.

_I don't know whose side she's on,_ he thought. _Still, if I leave her here, chances are she won't survive._ After a having a mental argument on whether or not he should take care of her, he decided that he couldn't just leave someone like this. Before picking up the girl he hid the spaceship by covering it in branches with their leaves still on that appear to have been broken off by the spaceship. He took her into his house, and laid her on his bed. He was still able to guard the Master Emerald from the window, but he occasionally had to walk to the bed because she was breathing so lightly it looked like she was dead from just a few feet away.

The girl slept for the next couple of days. Knuckles was starting to get worried when she finally woke up. She sat up, shook her head as if trying to shake off a dizzy spell, then looked around. It was now that Knuckles could finally have a good look at her eyes. They were aqua blue. When her eyes finally fell on Knuckles her eyes narrowed, and she looked straight ahead, with one elbow resting on her knee.

"Relax. I'm not gonna hurt you," said Knuckles. The girl glared darts at Knuckles for a moment, then looked ahead again.

"Why should I believe you?" she asked. Knuckles got irritated at this comment.

"Would've you preferred me to leave you at the spaceship!?" Knuckles asked angrily. "If I hadn't come by, you probably would have died!" When the girl didn't respond, her glare seemed to have softened slightly. Knuckles cooled down a little at this. "I've got some hot soup if you want," The girl still didn't say anything, but she nodded slightly. Knuckles went to the kitchen and warmed up the soup he prepared earlier and went back into the room.

When Knuckles walked up to the girl she glared at him again, but before he could respond she flipped the dish out of his hands with one hand while looking in the other direction, which sent the soup on the floor, and the bowl crashed to the floor.

"What'd you do that for!?" Knuckles said, stunned and angry at the same time. The girl gasped as if she realized what she did, then, putting her hand down, she gave Knuckles an apologetic look. Knuckles gave her a somewhat suspicious look, then said, "Alright, I'll give you another chance, but if you do that again, you'll only be getting bread and water, got it?" The girl nodded.

Knuckles got another bowl ready and as he set it on the nightstand he kept a close eye on the girl to make sure that she wouldn't flip the food out of his hands again. She picked up the spoon and took a small sip from it.

"Mmmmmmm," She said quietly, though Knuckles still heard it.

"Yeah, it's a secret recipe," he said. The girl blushed and rubbed the back of her head shyly. She finished the soup within ten minutes.

_Jeez, I guess she was hungry,_ he thought. The girl let out a loud burp and covered her mouth. Knuckles looked at her in surprise.

"Uh, excuse me," she said as she uncovered her mouth with a small giggle. "I guess I was hungry,"

"It's okay," said Knuckles. After a moment of silence the girl spoke up again.

"Um, what are you?" she asked. She appeared to be thinking her words over carefully.

"Huh?" Knuckles asked.

"What are you?" she repeated. Knuckles realized what she meant.

"Oh, that's right! We haven't introduced each other yet. My name's Knuckles the Echidna." He held out a hand. The girl looked at it nervously.

"Uh," she stuttered, putting her hands behind her back. "J-Just call me Cloud," she looked to the side.

"Well Cloud, where I come from, we shake hands when meeting new people," said Knuckles with a smile.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude," Cloud said as she they shook hands.

"I'm gonna get some sleep. If you want any food, there's plenty in the kitchen. Otherwise, I'll see you in the morning." Knuckles yawned. He went into the sleeping bag he had set up next to the bed and when he fell asleep he began to snore loudly. She went to the kitchen to get some more food and when she opened the fridge, she saw just about every food you could fit in that thing without it looking cramped.

_Wow, he must cook quite a bit, _she thought. _Still, I don't know if I can trust this guy. _Then she thought about what he said earlier. _Well, I suppose if he really did want to hurt me, he would have done it by now._ She got a "small" slice of lasagna (yeah, right, the thing could barely fit the plate) and went back to the room she was spending the night in. She set it on the nightstand and began to eat it, though she couldn't help but giggle to herself at the sound of Knuckles' snoring. When she finished she put the plate in the sink, curled up on the bed under the covers, and went to sleep.


	2. Morning Chores

Chapter 3 Morning chores

The next morning, Knuckles crawled out of his sleeping bag but when he looked over to the bed, he saw that Cloud wasn't there. Knuckles looked around, thinking she had left. He walked over to the other side of the bed and there she was, lying on the floor, curled up in a ball, fast asleep with the blanket over her.

_What in the world is she doing there? _Knuckles thought. He knelt down beside her, and shook her shoulder gently.

"Uh… Wha?" She said, still half asleep. Knuckles stepped back and smiled.

"I thought you might wanna help me with my morning chores," he said.

"Mmmph. Five more minutes," muttered Cloud, pulling the blanket over her head. Knuckles chuckled to him self.

_Doesn't look like she's fully awake yet. _He thought. He sat in the chair and eventually began tapping his foot impatiently. Cloud sat up and looked at Knuckles.

"Okay okay, I'm up," She grumbled. Then she looked around. "What time is it?"

"7:15" Said Knuckles.

"WHAT!!!??" Cloud said, now fully away. She lay back down. "Aw, man! I didn't mean to oversleep!" After realizing how hard her head hit the floor she added, "Owwww…" Knuckles couldn't help but laugh. Cloud sat back up, rubbing the back of her head. "You didn't happen to find a bag in the spaceship, did you?"

"No. I didn't even go in," said Knuckles. "Why?"

"I have a few things to pick up in there," said Cloud. "Would you mind taking me?"

"I still have to do my morning chores," said Knuckles.

"I'll help you," said Cloud. "What do you need to do?"

"Well, first off, I have to polish the Master Emerald," started Knuckles. "Then I need to get the weeds out of the garden."

"Okay. But what's the Master Emerald?"

"Look out the window," Cloud got to her feet and looked out the window to see the biggest Emerald that she had ever seen.

"Whoa, where'd you get that?" she asked, staring at the beautiful gem.

"Actually, I don't know how long I've had it. It's been here as long as I remember, and it's my job to guard it," said Knuckles.

"Oh," said Cloud, still not fully understanding it. "So, when do we start?"

"What about right now?" asked Knuckles.

"Okay," They both went outside to the Master Emerald shrine.

When Cloud and Knuckles got to the Master Emerald Cloud looked at the Emerald.

"Why would you need to polish it?" she asked. "It looks fine the way it is."

"That's why it looks like this, I polish it every day," said Knuckles with a smile.

While they were polishing the Emerald Knuckles kept looking at Cloud, then when she noticed, he shook his head and paid attention to what he was doing again. Cloud was a little distracted by this. At last, she looked at him and said, "What?"

"Well, I was wondering…" started Knuckles. He paused for a minute, trying to find the right words. "Did you fall out of bed last night?" Cloud laughed.

"No!" she giggled. "I used to sleep on hard surfaces a lot, so I had gotten so used to it the bed wasn't that comfortable for me, so I slept on the floor. Why?"

"Well, most people don't sleep on the floor," stated Knuckles. They both laughed.

Cloud looked at Knuckles occasionally and noticed that he was really putting effort into the polishing the Emerald. There was even sweat coming off his forehead. Just so she wouldn't look lazy Cloud began polishing as hard as she could, though it was making her hands quite sore. After a few minutes Knuckles looked over at her.

"Uh, you may wanna take it easy, Cloud," he said. "At least until you do it a few more times, otherwise your hands will go raw, even with the rag if you keep going like that on a first time," Cloud looked down at her hands, which were now really sore, and saw they were bright red. Knuckles stepped back, wiped his forehead and said, "Aright, I think that's good enough. You did a nice job Cloud," Cloud stepped back next to Knuckles.

_It doesn't look any different than when we started, _she thought. Still, she was proud of herself for getting a complement on something she did for the first time, even if it didn't seem to do anything.

"C'mon, let's get the garden done real quick," Knuckles said as he walked away from the shrine. Rubbing her hands, Cloud followed.

When they got to the garden, Cloud saw that it was much bigger than she expected.

_It's as big as a block!_ She thought. Apparently, her expression told what she was thinking, because Knuckles gave her a pat on the back and said,

"Don't worry, it actually doesn't take that long to get it done,"

"Okay then, what do we need to do?" asked Cloud.

"We need to get all the weeds out," He said. "Can you tell the difference between a vegetable and a weed?" Cloud cocked her head to the side with a confused look on her face. "I'll take that as a no," Knuckles muttered.

"Sorry, I'm not that familiar with plants," said Cloud, straitening her head back up.

"It's okay. See how the plants are in neat rows?" Knuckles asked, and pointed down the garden. Cloud looked and saw they were indeed in rows.

"Yeah, but there are some plants between them," she said, "Are they weeds?" Knuckles nodded.

"You learn fast," he said, surprised at how quickly she figured this out. "They usually look like this," He pulled out a nearby weed for Cloud to see.

"Okay, I can do that," She said.

"I'll start here you start on the other side," Said Knuckles. "We should meet in the middle," Cloud ran over to the other side of the garden.

Cloud started to pull the weeds. It was much easier than she expected. At the end of the first row, she pulled out what she thought was a weed, but there was a radish at the end.

"Ah, shoot!" she said. Knuckles looked over.

"Hey, that's not a weed!" he called.

"Sorry!" she called back. She buried the radish back where it was and continued.

_Yuck, I hate radishes!_ She thought.

When Cloud and Knuckles finally met, it wasn't exactly the middle. He had done at least twice as much as she had.

"Okay, we're done," said Knuckles. He looked at Cloud and chuckled. Cloud looked at herself and saw that she was dirty from head to toe. Then she looked at Knuckles. He didn't have any dirt on him, not even on his hands.

"Hey, how come you're not dirty?" she asked in surprise.

"How'd you get _that_ dirty?" asked Knuckles.

"I have no clue," said Cloud.

"How about you get cleaned up and then we'll go to the spaceship?" suggested Knuckles.

"Okay, but I don't have any clothes to change into," said Cloud.

"Well, you could barrow some of my clothes," said Knuckles.

_Oh, this could get interesting,_ Cloud thought as she looked at what Knuckles had on.

They walked up back up to the house and Knuckles tossed Cloud a light tan button-up shirt and stonewash jeans. She knew the jeans were going to be a little big, but she decided not to say anything Cloud gave him a funny look.

"Uh, my friend Amy made me pick that," He said.

"Who?" asked Cloud.

"Oh, right. You haven't met my friends yet," Knuckles said, rubbing the back of his head. "Would you like to meet them after we finish up in the spaceship?"

"Uh…" Cloud said nervously.

"C'mon, they're harmless enough," Knuckles said with a grin.

"Oh, okay," said Cloud with a nod.

While Cloud went to take a shower while Knuckles took her dirty clothes and put them in the washer. About a half an hour later, Cloud came out with her barrowed clothes on.

_They look better on her than they do on me,_ Knuckles thought as he looked at her for a moment. Cloud looked at him.

"What?" she said. Knuckles snapped out of his thoughts.

"Uh, nothing. Let's go," he said.


End file.
